personal reflections on two years of marriage

In nine days, my hubby and I will celebrate our second wedding anniversary.  Our wedding day is still vividly preserved in my memory, as I know it will be for years to come.  I can see the chocolate brown of the tablecloths, the bright blue and white of the fresh hydrangeas popping up over the tables in beautiful arrangements.  I can smell the slight hint of salt that the ocean breeze blew inland, and the feeling I had when I slipped on my white wedding gown and zipped it up the side is still richly imprinted on my mind.  Although two years seems to have passed by quickly, I also feel that the amount of time has allowed me to grow and mature, to experience many new things and make new memories.

I remember the night that I first met Eric in December 2006 at my company's Christmas party.  Despite the fact he is insistent I was wearing a red dress, when in fact I was wearing black pants and a black top, we often reminisce about the first meeting that he remembers clearly too.  There are a few slight discrepancies between our memories of that night.  Aside from the red dress debate, he also contests that he was standing at a bar, ready to offer me a drink when I allegedly walked by quickly with only a brief smile.  I continue to argue that if he wanted to talk so bad, he could have gone after me.  The second meeting, in January 2007 can perhaps be considered the real start of it all.  During a Saints vs. Bears playoff game, he asked me out on a first date and two and a half years later we were married.

Aside from the first six weeks of our marriage which were spent living in NYC, the rest of our time has been spent in Columbia, South Carolina.  A place neither of us had spent any time previously.  The move was difficult for me; I always thought I was adventurous, up to live anywhere and ready for big changes.  In reality, it was hard to move from my friends and to still live so far away from my family.  I find myself now very thankful for the challenge.  It gave our new marriage the opportunity to be removed from everything safe and familiar.  We have taken the opportunity to discover the many great things about the place we live, which has even led us to discoveries about each other and our interests.  It has also challenged us to go out and make new friends, to be independent and outgoing. 

The move was not the only huge change we took on post-wedding; relocating coincided with our purchasing a franchise.  We would own our own business.  I think we were both slightly apprehensive of how it would be working together.  It all happened so fast that we really didn't have too much time to worry about it.  I could say luckily I love working together, but I don't really believe it has anything to do with luck.  I think it has been an exercise in understanding each other better, maintaining respect for one another and putting forth good old fashioned effort.  I've witnessed a very commanding, determined, pragmatic and discerning side to the person I married that I'm very proud of.  Working together has exposed our strengths (which oftentimes are different) and our weaknesses.  It has led to a different understanding of one another and a deeper appreciation.  Admittedly it isn't always rosy; sometimes we disagree on how to solve a problem, how to approach a situation, it's all part of working together.

Personally, I believe that love has many different levels, different meanings and different applications.  I love my friends for their companionship, loyalty and fun-loving nature.  I love my family for supporting and loving me back unconditionally.  I have even learned over the years (an ongoing process) to love myself, to appreciate my own abilities and to love other people in return.  In my marriage, I love my partner in each of those different ways.  

Undoubtedly, the next few years will feel like they flew by.  In my twenty-seventh year, I feel self-aware while still a bit unsure of what the future will hold; but as I continue to grow as a person, I know we will continue to grow together in our relationship.  

As we count the passing years and celebrate anniversaries to come, I'll keep close the memory of the first Christmas party, and of saying "yes" to being asked out on a first date.  I'll still recall the intense fluttering in my stomach and rush to my head as I looked at the man before me down on one knee with a ring in his outstretched hand.  An imprint of the sounds, smells and people that were there on our wedding day will remain on my mind and now I also have these first two years of change, challenge, triumph and growing to look back on and cherish.   

Chains do not hold a marriage together.  It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years.  ~Simone Signoret  

A Non-Parent's Opinion on Parenting

I'm not a parent yet.  Not even close.  I don't even have a dog.  But I don't think you have to be a parent  to have a reaction to the recent articles in the Wall Street Journal that commented on parenting styles.  The first was written by a Chinese mother who very boldly, profoundly and confidently stated the reasons why Chinese mother's most often produce highly successful children. And she bluntly meant more successful children than Western mothers.  She started out the article with a list of things that her children were never allowed to do: "attend a sleep-over, have a play-date, be in a school play, choose their own extracurricular activities."

Me as Alice

I had an instant reaction to the writer's words.  I was allowed to do every single one of those activities.  In fact, I was proud I had assumed the role of Alice in the fourth grade for my elementary school's production of The Trial of Alice in Wonderland.
I attended many sleep-overs where we stayed up too late, watched far too many movies in one sitting and ate more candy than was ever allowed in my household growing up.  So in reading the WSJ article I can say that my blood seemed to boil a little and I felt enrage at the suggestion that because of those things, this mother would have assumed I would turn out less than perfect.  Okay, I'll admit I'm not perfect, but I doubt attending sleep-overs and participating in school plays lowered my grade point average in the fourth, fifth, sixth grade or made me a less successful kid.

During my
ballet days (hard work!)

I can flat out say that I couldn't really agree with anything the author stated in her article, in fact, most of it just made me cringe.  But there was one line that especially stood out to me as being true and rather thought-provoking: "What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it."  The lady has a point.  I think as humans we are all inclined to like an activity, a subject in school, a musical instrument if we are good at them.  However, becoming good at something takes hard work, determination, dedication and I believe that initially to have the desire to work that hard at something, you have to like it, at least a little bit, far before you are any good at it.


You have to read the article to gain the full depth of this discussion.  If interested, I've made it easy, just click on the link below:
Why Chinese Mother's are Superior  


Clearly, I was not the only Western American that was riled up by the Chinese mother's article.  The rebuttal came only a few days after the first article, again in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.  This time, it was by a Jewish mother and outlined her antithesis to parenting which included letting her children decide what activities they wanted to partake in and when they wanted to quit said activities, the copious amounts of TV and computer games they were allowed to partake in and the fact that even though her kids were allowed to do these things, they too received good grades in school.  I had a problem with this article too.  The mother seemed to be almost too far on the other end; not pushing her children to excel when the opportunity was there and allowing them to quit when it seemed things got a bit hard.  I finished this second article with the feeling that both extreme points had been made but that I agreed with neither of them.  I suppose that's what these types of commentaries are meant to do...


Rebuttal article:
In Defense of the Guilty, Ambivalent, Preoccupied Western Mom


I hardly ever read the Wall Street Journal so I appreciate both these articles for making me pick up the paper and become interested in what each author had to say.  Since reading both pieces, I've thought about each message and the points that were made in the black and white letters typed out on the newspaper pages. Here I am, not even a parent, and I became a bit enthralled with the ongoing discussion of what was the "correct" or more "successful" way to parent is.  What I realized is that this discussion reaches beyond the boundaries of parenting.  I know I'll face all these decisions one day when I am a parent and frankly, I haven't really thought about how much TV my kids should watch or how many sleep-overs I will or won't let them attend.  But right now, as an adult, I need to just focus on the kind of person I want to be.  What new boundaries and new challenges will I set for myself.  I for one, think my western parents did a very successful job raising me so now it's time for this western grown up to live successfully.

"The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experiences."

~ Eleanor Roosevelt